It should have been the ideal day to interview Fox Business Network anchor Neil Cavuto: Lehman Brothers had filed for bankruptcy protection, Bank of America had agreed to buy out Merrill Lynch, the Federal Reserve was considering a bailout for insurance giant AIG, and the Dow was well on its way to a 500-point plunge (and doesn't that seem quaint in retrospect?).

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Ideal, except Cavuto, as it turns out, actually had work to do. The longtime Jersey resident had a trying day even by his own standards -- on a typical morning, he's up at 4:30 a.m. and has three staff meetings under his belt before 9 a.m., not to mention anchoring "Your World with Neil Cavuto" at 4 p.m. on Fox News Channel, "Cavuto" at 6 p.m. on Fox Business and a financial newscast on Fox News Radio.

The details of this history-making day on Wall Street put him in front of the camera for much of the afternoon, and it would have been easy to attribute the rasp underlying his smooth delivery to mere overexertion. In reality, Cavuto had recently undergone experimental surgery on his larynx, which suffered nerve damage due to multiple sclerosis, the debilitating neurological disease he was diagnosed with a decade ago.

His struggle with MS, which led to his best-selling book, "More Than Money: True Stories of People Who Learned Life's Ultimate Lesson," was to be the subject of our talk. But that's like interviewing Roosevelt about his polio while the Japanese drop bombs on Pearl Harbor. (Or, if we're being fair and accurate, like President Bush continuing to read "The Pet Goat" while the World Trade Center burns.)

On the day of our rescheduled talk some three weeks later, Cavuto, 50, bounded into his corner office, friendly and upbeat despite another round of dreary Wall Street news. "Maybe I'm showing my age," he says, relaxing into a chair. "I've been here and done this. When I see people caught up in the moment, I've been through this moment. I've been through a couple of moments" -- namely, the 1987 stock market crash and the fallout after 9/11.

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"I hear 'Depression.' 'It's the end of the world.' 'If you've got a lead suit, get it out.' We've been through worse," Cavuto says. "I always try to provide that perspective. Times could be worse. Life is a gift, and its challenges are a gift. I don't know many people who would rather the alternative."

Wait, did someone change the channel? It's starting to feel a little Lifetime for Women in here. But Cavuto's economic cheerleading fits in perfectly with the mission of the year-old Fox Business Network, which positions itself as a friendlier, less jargon-heavy alternative to CNBC and Bloomberg Television, and unapologetically pro-business. ("What I've learned about is that they are all capitalists when they negotiate their own contracts and on payday," Fox mastermind Roger Ailes told Fortune magazine last year. "Other than that, they're suspicious of corporations, profits, capitalism and generally democracy. We tend to be enthusiastic capitalists all the time because we refuse to be phony about it.")

Cavuto, who is also Fox Business Network's managing editor, keeps his lead suit packed away in the sprawling Mendham mansion he shares with wife Mary, daughter Tara, 20, and the two sons they adopted four years ago, Bradley, 7, and Jeremy, 6 (or, as he playfully calls them, "al Qaeda in footie pajamas.")

Business news was not always in his blood; born to an Irish mother and an Italian father, he attended Catholic school, and enrolled in St. Bonaventure University with plans to become a priest. He met his future wife while working on the college newspaper at St. Bonaventure University; she was a reporter, he was her copy editor.

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Earlier in his career, he covered business news for PBS and Investment Age Magazine. He also battled Hodgkin's lymphoma, his illness so advanced that his doctors recommended getting his papers in order. He went through chemotherapy and radiation during the 1987 Wall Street crash, when he threw up between takes and his cameraman had to shoot him from a certain angle to hide his hair loss.

He moved to CNBC, where he hosted the highly-rated "Market Wrap," and contributed to the "Today" show, before jumping to Fox News in 1996. That's when he started suffering severe headaches and went to see a doctor, worried about a cancer recurrence.

This time, the scans showed MS, a progressive autoimmune disease that can lead to blindness and paralysis. Cavuto is in the small percentage -- about one-half of 1 percent -- of MS sufferers who develop problems with the nerves around their larynx.

"I could live with being in a wheelchair, even with being blind," he says, "but I could not lose my voice."

His doctors gave his surgery -- essentially installing a bionic voice box in his throat -- a 30 percent shot at working, but so far, so good. One doctor, however, is a Fox Business Network devotee who constantly berates Cavuto to give his voice more of a break. Maybe during the next recession.